Archive for December 13th, 2013

I use Grammarly’s free plagiarism checkeronline because let’s face it as original as I am, my posts leave a lot to be desired by English teachers.

I’ve never read anything by Luanne Rice and have no idea how this particular book ended up on my wish list. To make matters even worse, when I read the blurb, I was ready to march right back into the library to return it because it just was not my sort of book.

Here’s the blurb-

“ Clare Burke’s life took a devastating turn when she tried to protect her sister, Anne, from an abusive and controlling husband and ended up serving prison time for assault. The verdict largely hinged on Anne’s defense of her spouse—all lies—and the sisters have been estranged ever since. Nearly twenty years later, Clare is living a quiet life in Manhattan as an urban birder and nature blogger, when her niece, Grit, turns up on her doorstep.

The two long for a relationship with each other, but they’ll have to dig deep into their family’s difficult past in order to build one. Together they face the wounds inflicted by Anne and find in their new connection a place of healing. When Clare begins to suspect her sister might be in New York, she and her niece hold out hope for a long-awaited reunion with her.”

Now I know that there are those that hate the term Chick Lit, but there was no doubt in my mind that this fit in that category. However, I had paid $1 to get the book transferred to my library and it was on my wish list, so I was going to read it gosh darn it!

The book ripped my heart out and served it back cold like Gazpacho. It was real and while I don’t have any siblings, I could relate and verify every heart-wrenching reaction in this family’s dynamic. I can’t remember ever being so wrong about my first impressions of a book before.

Clare decides to take action in her sister’s abusive marriage and her sister’s outright betrayal of her means that everyone pays the price for the rest of their lives. Claire gets sent to prison, putting her own relationship in a permanent holding pattern. She keeps everyone that enters her life at arm’s length and all the while wonders how her sister, her niece and nephew are doing. This goes on for twenty long years.

Then her niece shows up at her front door and everything changes. She has to learn to bend, to wonder what has happened with her sister without pushing, to share her very circumscribed life, to just plain live again. Girt, her niece, has some learning, bending, and opening up to do of her own as well.